TOUGH LOVE FOR TROUBLEMAKERS

While Chilliwack is spending more than one million dollars per year to
fight marijuana grow-ops, it may be heartening to know there is an
army of unpaid volunteers behind the ongoing battle.

A group of city officials, fire and police staff, community members,
ICBC and business owners have built the Public Safety Advisory
Committee on the ideal of a drug-free community, and its members are
pushing for the closest possible version.

The committee, which meets on its own time, is co-chaired by city
councillors Sharon Gaetz and Chuck Stam.

"We started this because we had a really big concern about grow-ops,"
says Gaetz, from her office as pastor of the Southside Church. She
recalls the shocking 2002 UBC report that named Chilliwack as the
second-highest producer of such operations.

"Seeing as B.C. has the highest number of grow-ops, it was easy to
surmise that we were one of the top (producers) in Canada," she says.
"We knew we had to do something about it."

The group got started right away, meeting once a month at the crack of
dawn. (Gaetz explains that it's the only free time for all of the busy
members.) Now, many of the city's bylaws regarding grow-ops and meth
labs, the Block Watch program and a state-of-the-art anti-fencing
program all directly stem from this four-year-old committee.

The July meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, at 7 a.m. at
Chilliwack City Hall, and Gaetz says the public always has been, and
always will be welcome to join in discussion, table ideas and air
grievances, either as a group or an individual.

There are exceptions to that rule, though. Gaetz explains that due to
the nature of the committee, they occasionally discuss issues
surrounding known criminals that the public is not privy to.

During those in-camera sessions, the public will be asked to
leave.

"We are getting lots of input from the public," she says. "We can help
them find a direct link to action when they call us about an issue.
And we really rely on that information."

She says there is no actual budget for the committee, made up mostly
of public service workers, and that Chilliwack is already spending in
excess of a million dollars on drug-related crime management.

"That was one of our first actions, was to find out how much grow-ops
in particular cost our community," she says. "From that we created a
victim impact statement to be read in court at any drug-related
hearing. We wanted to make sure that the judges don't take this lightly."

But cost-saving is not the real driving force behind the committee, as
Gaetz explains the dangers inherent of both meth labs and grow operations.

"There are sometimes children involved. There is a danger to the
police and firefighters who enter the buildings, there are bypasses
and unsafe electrical wiring. Sometimes there are even booby traps or
attack dogs, and even guns," she lists.

"Make no mistake, this is not just a ma-and-pa organization," Gaetz
says. "These people are not in the business so they make a little more
money and eat Doritos and be happy. They are greedy and harmful."

Just how harmful? Gaetz says local RCMP report that "over 85 per cent
of Chilliwack's crime is directly attributable to drugs."

But the tide may be changing, she adds. In 2004, just two years after
the start-up of the safety committee, the local crime rate fell 11 per
cent.

"Still, we are uncovering a grow-op in Chilliwack every
week-and-a-half (on average)," she says. She thinks merit can partly
be attributed to the committee, extra police forces and a keen public
eye.

But mostly, the turnaround may be a change in attitude at all levels.
Instead of each agency, such as the police, fire and city staff,
dealing with crime issues on their own, they are meeting and
discussing issues, and creating plans of action quickly to tackle
shared problems.

"Nobody works in isolation now," she says. "It takes the wisdom of a
large group of people to do things effectively. That's really well
reflected in this committee."

The committee's next step is to work with BC Hydro to cross-reference
erratic power usage with addresses suspected of growing marijuana.

"If there are concerns about a huge spike in energy use, we'll know
about that," she says. The reports, supplied by BC Hydro, could also
potentially point out addresses which appear to have someone living
there, but there is no hydro being used.

A situation like that would indicate the dangerous and illegal
practice of bypassing electrical boxes or stealing from main hydro
lines, common in the drug trade.

Gaetz says a major focus of the committee is to deter criminals from
re-offending. And while they believe that can be accomplished in part
through stiff fines, penalties and longer jail sentences, they also
see the need for social reform along the way.

The mayor's committee on social issues has joined the fray, in hopes
of picking up the falling pieces and provide a "one-stop shopping"
agency for rehab, affordable housing and job placement.

"Our committees dovetail," says Mel Folkman, city councillor and chair
of the social issues group.

"We are just in the initial throes," he explains. "We've only had
about three meetings, so we're basically just establishing what our
role will be, identifying the key social roles and coming up with a
key plan of action to make sure we're addressing those issues."

What they've discovered so far is an urgent need to "provide for those
who have the greatest need, and make sure we're not sending them from
one agency to another to another to another. We would create a
one-stop-shopping centre, one referral point."

The danger in sending someone from agency to another, he explains, is
that people get lost along the way, back to crime, poor mental health,
drug use or prostitution.

The group has already made plans to send a delegation to Calgary,
where a cohesive agency has already accomplished what Chilliwack hopes
to set forth.

"There are a number of programs there that we think are really quite
exciting," Folkman says.

He hopes to have continued support from the community, and believes
the teamwork between both the public safety advisory committee and the
social issues committee will make each group stronger.

"There is the crime aspect and then the social aspect, and the two are
the same. Often the people who are committing crimes are the ones who
have social issues that have not been resolved," Folkman says.

Both committees take suggestions and letters from the public to be
discussed at meetings. They also try to steer individuals to the
proper agency to quickly resolve crime and social issues.